A Kenya Airways plane landed Tuesday at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, with police officers on board.
"Honoured to see off the first batch of the contingent of the National Police Service officers who are part of the historic United Nations Mission to Haiti. Grateful to Kenya Airways for facilitating the transportation of our officers," announced Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for the Interior & National Administration Kithure Kindiki on Monday on his page in Facebook*.
Earlier, President William Ruto led the departing police officers in a prayer ceremony.
"God, you have chosen our country Kenya to lead the [peace] mission in Haiti," he said during the ceremony.
The Kenyan government had previously postponed the deployment of the force to Haiti, initially planned for May 21, for undisclosed reasons. At that time, 200 police officers had been mentioned.
Criminal gangs in Haiti have taken over nearly all of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and have committed numerous murders, kidnappings, and sexual assaults.
In January, Ruto declared that Kenya still intended to send the mission, and he later signed an intergovernmental agreement with Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry's resignation led the Kenyan government to announce in March that it was temporarily suspending the operation. Kenya's opposition party had earlier asked the court to examine the preparations for sending police to Haiti.
* Extremist organization banned in Russia